"La Garra", The bloodthirsty CJNG leader that little is reported about

Posted by LeChef for Borderland Beat from La Silla Rota

The Cartel Jalisco New Generation is the youngest transnational criminal organization, but also the most powerful in Mexico and the United States, according to DEA.

Therefore, the leaders of this organization automatically become the “most wanted” criminals. Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes AKA El Mencho, is the supreme leader and therefore the number one public enemy for Mexican and US Authorities.

However, working for him, is a drug trafficker of whom little has been spoken of and who represents a key role in CJNG.

Jose Luis Mendoza Cardenas AKA La Garra appears in "The National Drug Threat Evaluation" of DEA.

The US Authorities place La Garra in the trio of leaders of the CJNG, along with El Mencho and Abigael Gonzalez Valencia AKA El Cuini, detained on March 2, 2015 in Puerto Vallerta.

Unlike Oseguera Cervantes and González Valencia, who has widely investigated, Mendoza Cárdenas seems a drug trafficker working in the shadows. From what little is known about him is that he was arrested in 2008, before CJNG was known as Cartel Jalisco New Generation.

He was arrested on August 1, 2008, along with six subjects, for the atrocious murder of a family in Ciudad Guzmán, on July 25 of that year. The multihomicide shook all of Jalisco. Of the six members of the family who were murdered, three were minors: a 17-year-old boy, as well as two girls of eight and seven years old.

In addition, the property had belonged to Alberto Cárdenas Jiménez, at that time Secretary of Agriculture and Livestock, former governor of Jalisco.

Cárdenas Jiménez had sold the property two months and a half before the crime to the family in his words,  "we were united by an old friendship". He added, in addition, that previously property buyers had been victims of kidnapping years ago so they decided to change their address.

Less than a month after his arrest, on August 30, 2008, "La Garra" was released. This release without apparent explanation occurred during the governorship of the PAN Emilio González Márquez, who was also accused of having released "El Mencho" in August 2012 after having been arrested two hours earlier by elements of the Federal Police.

Less than ten years after his brief arrest, Mendoza Cárdenas is at the top of the criminal world. Everything indicates that "La Garra" is not found in Mexico, but in the US, serving as the main operator of the CJNG in that country.

According to the DEA, the CJNG stronghold in the United States is California, from where Mendoza Cárdenas would operate. The main drug trafficked into the US is methamphetamine, an addictive substance that they became pioneers since they worked with the Sinaloa Cartel under the orders of Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, murdered in 2010.

Although they also distribute, to a lesser extent, cocaine, heroin and marijuana. The DEA details that the drug comes from Guadalajara, entering the United States through Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez and Nuevo Laredo.

Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta are the main distribution centers of the CJNG. In Mexican territory, according to the Attorney General's Office (PGR), the CJNG operates in eight states of the country: Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Guerrero, Morelos and Veracruz.

Thus, the cartel with the most presence in Mexico, even greater than the Sinaloa Cartel, which has been reduced by criminal coups and currently operates, according to official data, in six of the country's entities.